Blood & Treasure Review: Return of the Queen (Season 1 Episode 11)
With only two episodes to follow, Blood & Treasure Season 1 Episode 11, “Return of the Queen,” should feel like a crescendo building towards a bombastic climax — but after another lifeless side adventure, it’s hard to escape the feeling Blood & Treasure is fumbling its way to the finish line.
The reveal of Reese as the potential Big Bad of the season is a laughable proposition: and not because it’s a completely unbelievable twist for Blood & Treasure to pull off because it certainly could’ve felt like a huge tease for the final two hours.
In fact, it might be the most narratively satisfying option: as Danny’s mentor and friend, his manipulation provides fertile ground to challenges Danny’s perceptions about his life and choices… at least, in theory.
In reality, Reese’s been too ethereal a presence on Blood & Treasure to have any weight as a character. It’s impossible to understand his motives, or even his personality beyond “rich white guy really into antiques.”
Save for the lazily-included flashback we get at the beginning of “Return of the Queen,” Reese’s presence as leader and mentor to Danny just hasn’t been an integral part of this story.
And for good reason: there are so many other, lesser stories Blood & Treasure shoves into every 40-minute episode, nothing has room to breathe. More importantly, because of all the pointless secondary material in Blood & Treasure, plot ends up dictating the actions of its characters — and not the other way around.
Because of this, the various interpersonal relationships are never able to grow beyond their embryonic stages: there’s but one or two distinguishable bullet points, none of which are cultivated enough to feel like something of substance.
Look at Lexi/Danny’s romantic relationship: when that dynamic serves no purpose to the plot, it utterly disappears from the episode. Is it possible to tell the two are a couple, or are trying to figure out what they mean to each other?
“Return of the Queen” suggests they’re very horny for each other when they find Cleopatra — but even that moment is immediately swallowed by the next plot point and forgotten by the end of the episode.
Danny and Reese is an even larger chasm of plausibility: in eleven episodes, we’ve seen scenes spanning a 70-plus year period of history… and yet there’s only time to include one scene at the beginning of “Return of the Queen” to develop Danny and Reese’s two-decade-long relationship together?
To call it “flimsy” is an understatement; and that’s why moments like Shaw’s sudden reappearance and Gwen’s shift back to trusting Danny and Lexi don’t feel like the dramatic, meaningful turns they should. Rather, they feel like by-the-numbers choices made because, well, what else is there to do now but put everyone in the same room?
Had Blood & Treasure narrowed its focus just a little bit, there would be room for these characters and dynamics to blossom. But “Return of the Queen” makes no such compromise, throwing logic and coherency to the wind in favor of whatever is loudest and simplest.
I’ve barely discussed the actual plot of “Return of the Queen.” It is so illogical, and of such little consequence to the overall narrative, it’s almost silly.
Just look at when the group is tied up in the cave holding Cleopatra (by a man who supposedly knew the whole island, though never found the coffin it took our heroes five minutes to discover).
After surprising and tying up the group, the assailants escape, only to be silently murdered seconds later… with no evidence of who managed to quietly (and bloodlessly) kill them, or sign of them on the miles of visible open water behind them (even though it’s only been a few minutes).
It is laughably implausible how these unnamed assailants vanish into thin air – but more unsettling is how the whole expedition to the Bermuda Triangle is undercut by its obvious lack of importance.
It is but another hour of Blood & Treasure spinning the narrative wheel, throwing its characters into random situations without any consideration of the actual human experience of its story.
This episode could’ve opened with the reveal of Reese as potential Big Bad Terrorist Man, to at least make the race to find Cleopatra in Colombia something interesting.
Instead, we get a saccharine, undercooked tale of a young girl-turned-woman who lost her father, details revealed to be as unimportant as the woman speaking them when the Big Mystery kicks in once again.
The connection should be easy.
Lexi helping a woman bring closure to the strange conditions of her father’s death is a parallel so obvious, it smacks the viewer in the face. It offers an emotional foundation much of this episode (and season) has utterly lacked, something to ground this revolving turn style of art thieves and mystical brotherhoods in beyond “terrorist attacks are really bad!”
But “Return of the Queen” makes no effort whatsoever to utilize those moments to build out either woman, a perfect encapsulation of Blood & Treasure ignoring its own promise for whatever loud, shallow turn it wants to have next.
Another great example is Simon Hardwick, who briefly mentions at one point that besides being a murderer, he’s doing pretty well after Farouk’s death, an utterance that’s never revisited or contextualized.
It’s so frustrating to watch Blood & Treasure get so close to unlocking the potential of its characters, only to interrupt itself with another expository dump or superficial twist.
All of this pulls the episode down, ultimately rendering the moment they find Cleopatra so utterly empty, I laughed out loud when Lexi said she can suddenly “feel” her lineage to Cleopatra like never before. Really?
Again, this should feel like a big moment; but it almost feels like the characters know they’re in the eleventh episode, and the rug is going to be pulled out from under them immediately. It telegraphs the bait-and-switch of the conceit from a mile away and undercuts the one tangible development of the hour.
(and no, “Gwen gets knocked out by the secret ninja” is not a coherent plot point.)
“Return of the Queen” tugs and pulls at the fringes of its larger game; but as it reveals in the final two minutes, that revelation is nowhere as exciting as it thinks — or more presciently, as it should be.
Blood & Treasure continues to think itself a well of unlimited storytelling opportunity; and yet, it continues to feel like a random aggregation of plot points and exotic locales, struggling mightily to justify its self-proclaimed title as the summer’s greatest adventure.
What did you think of this episode of Blood & Treasure? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Blood & Treasure airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on CBS.
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Randy Dankievitch
Randy Dankievitch is a TV critic living in Portland, Maine, whose obsession with pop culture began as a child, watching reruns of The Muensters while listening to Paul's Boutique on repeat. A writer since 2011, Randy is currently the writer of TV Never Sleeps, TV Editor at Goomba Stomp, and a columnist for Up Portland, with previous bylines at Sound on Sight, Processed Media, TV Overmind, and many others.